Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“I did.” Frances speaks clearly.

“When?”

“Last night.”

Silence. How is it possible to feel so cold and yet to be sweating at the same time? How long have we been sitting here? What’s the big deal anyway?

Whack across the side of the head.

“I’ll tell you what the ‘big deal’ is” — oh no, Frances, you said it out loud, you thought you just thought it but you said it — “the big deal is, you had your sister out in the middle of the night and she could have caught her death of pneumonia.”

Frances: “So could I.”

“You have the gift of health. Your sister is delicate.”

“I’m fine Daddy,” says Lily, and sneezes.

Frances almost grins, but Mercedes looks down. She does not believe in accidents. James has not taken his eyes off Frances. “What in God’s name were you doing?”

Frances considers. And answers, “We planted something.”

“What?”

Lily saves Frances. “We planted a tree. For the family.”

Mercedes looks at Frances as the penny drops.

James asks Frances, “Under the rock?”

“It’s a really strong tree.” Thank you Lily.

James looks at Frances. He should pave over the garden plot and park the car on it. But that wouldn’t seem right. He should dig up what’s there and put it elsewhere. But he can’t. And perhaps, after last night, it is no longer there. He looks at Frances. Surely she was too young to remember. But if she does…. What kind of person takes her baby sister out at night to exhume infant remains?

Frances meets James’s eyes and says, “I told Lily that if we dug in the garden we might find treasure. But we didn’t find anything.”

James resumes his seat. He rests his eyes on the tea-leaves at the bottom of his cup. Mercedes pours him some hot. He sips. Frances can’t believe her luck. Mercedes says a prayer of thanks and apologizes to God for being ungrateful about her family. James says to Frances, “Eat.”

“I’ve already finished, Daddy, look.”

“So you have.”

No. She could not possibly remember.

From breakfast on through all the day

at home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the Land of Nod .

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, “THE LAND OF NOD”

A very young Frances is standing in the creek in the middle of the night staring out. At us. Or at someone behind us. She is holding a bundle in her skinny arms. You can sort of almost see it from the corner of your eye but you can’t see it at all when you look right at it. Like trying to look directly at a dim object in the dark. It’s annoying. What is it? And just when you thought this was a still picture in black and white, the water around Frances’s white nightgown lights up blue. The source of this light is a bright blue fish that’s flicking and swimming about her ankles. It’s beautiful. Lily wakes up screaming.

“Lily, Jesus Christ Almighty!” Frances is blanched and staring at Lily’s shell-shocked form, silent now, and ramrod-straight beside her in the bed.

The overhead bulb goes on — it’s James in a plaid panic. “What’s happened?”

Mercedes appears behind him, a new line hovering at her brow.

“It’s okay, she had a nightmare,” says Frances, petting Lily’s rigid back.

Lily turns and looks at James. He comes to her and picks her up. She wraps her arms and legs around him and lays her head upon his shoulder, eyes wide open. He rocks her gently from side to side, wondering a little at the recent rash of nightmares under his roof.

Lily says, “I dreamt I was a fish.”

Frances shivers. Mercedes smooths her temples.

“In the creek,” Lily continues. “And I couldn’t breathe.”

Mercedes heads down to the kitchen to make hot milk all around. Frances rolls over and rescues Lillian Gish from the icefloe. James leaves the room but returns a few minutes later, just ahead of Mercedes. He has Trixie. Trixie looks terrified but knows enough not to move a muscle when in this particular embrace. He puts Trixie down gently next to Lily, who buries her face in the astonished black fur. When Mercedes passes around the warm milk, James pours a little of his own into his hand and offers it to Trixie. Trixie gives him a look, then bends and laps it up.

“Do you feel better now, sweetie?” James asks.

“Yes,” answers Lily.

Trixie curls up between Frances and Lily; James tucks them in and turns out the light.

Back in her room, Mercedes is finishing Jane Eyre again. She was thankful when Frances returned her favourite volume apparently unscathed. Now, with that mixture of satisfaction and regret with which one comes to the end of a beloved book, Mercedes turns the last page only to find Frances’s unmistakeable scrawl on the flyleaf. It is an epilogue, wherein Mr Rochester’s hand, severed and lost in the fire, comes back to life and strangles their infant child.

Mercedes closes the book and merely sighs. She is past weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is abundantly clear that her two sisters are working their way through everything that is of the slightest value to her and ruining it. Mercedes is resigned. For now. Someday she will marry someone wonderful. Perhaps not Valentino. But wonderful nonetheless. She will have her own family and they will be civilized. Frances will be allowed to live with them, but it will be Mercedes’ castle. And her husband’s too, of course. But not yet. Daddy needs her. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee….

“If you were a fish, how come you couldn’t breathe?”

Frances hasn’t touched her milk. It’s on the bedside table wearing a wrinkled skin.

“I was drownding.”

“Fish don’t drown.”

“You were in it, Frances.”

“In the creek?”

“You were little.”

“… I know.”

“What were you holding?”

“Nothing…. I don’t remember. Go to sleep. It was just a dream.”

Lily’s hand glows red around the Bakelite Virgin — conductive scarlet threads beneath the line of life, of fate, heart and mind, her palm bleeding light.

Later that night Frances is awakened by a weight on her chest. She opens her eyes and looks into Trixie’s intent face staring into her own at a range of about an inch. Trixie’s black paw hovers white-tipped and frozen in mid air. A wizened slimy strand of something like the throw-uppy bit of a raw egg dangles from the corner of Trixie’s mouth. Frances blinks and Trixie turns back to the glass of tepid milk on the bedside table, ignoring Frances, wiping her milky face, dipping and drinking.

The first time Ambrose comes to Lily he is naked except for the decomposing bits of Frances’s old white nightgown in which he was laid to rest. The shreds cling to him here and there, fluttering slightly because there’s a bit of a breeze when Ambrose arrives. Safe and soundless in his garden womb, he has not been dreaming because he has not been asleep. He has been growing. His body is streaked with earth and coal but otherwise he is pale as a root. Although he is exactly the same age as Lily, he is full-grown like a man whereas she is still a little girl. This is because their environments have been so different. What colour is his wispy angel hair beneath the dirt and soot? Reddish. He is standing at the foot of the bed. Frances is asleep. Lily is somewhere in between. She must be; to see such a thing, and not scream? To see such a thing and know it can’t quite be a dream, because there is the foot of my bed; there is my sister sleeping; there is my rag doll; and here is Trixie curled between us with one eye open. And there is Ambrose. Although Lily does not yet recognize her twin.